Cancer Deaths in U.S. Carry High Economic Cost

NEW YORK DEC 10, 2008 (Reuters Health) - Lives lost due to cancer in the U.S. entail a heavy financial toll, alone with the human costs, but investment in programs that target the most common cancers or ones that tend to occur in younger, working-age individuals, may help reduce the economic losses, according to two reports in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

In their first study, Dr. K. Robin Yabroff, from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues calculate that in 2000, the value of lives lost to cancer was $960.6 billion, with lung cancer alone representing more than 25 percent of this amount.

If cancer mortality trends continue as they are, the team predicts that the total value of life lost will rise 53 percent to $1.47 trillion in 2020.

However, with just a 2-percent annual reduction in cancer mortality, a marked drop in the economic impact from lives lost would occur. For instance, with breast cancer, the value of life lost would fall from $121.0 to $80.7 billion and for lung cancer from $433.4 to $289.4 billion.

"These estimates and projections may be used to target investments to cancer control strategies for tumor sites that are likely to result in the greatest reductions in burden of illness and those that are the most cost-effective," the researchers state.

In their second study, the researchers used U.S. Census and death certificate data to calculate productivity costs from cancer deaths in the U.S. from 2000 to 2020.

During this period, the annual productivity cost from cancer deaths climbed from $115.8 to $147.6 billion. Once again, deaths from lung cancer accounted for over 25 percent of the cost. If earnings lost due to caregiving and household activity are included in the analysis, then the costs amount to $232.4 billion in 2000 and will climb to $308 billion by 2020.

With a 1-percent annual drop in lung, colorectal, breast, leukemia, pancreatic, and brain cancer deaths, the researchers calculate an $814 million reduction in productivity costs per year.

"Perhaps the primary benefit of monetary estimates is simply to translate what professionals and patients already know about the human costs of cancer into a metric that is universally understood," Dr. Scott D. Ramsey, from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, comments in a related editorial.

"As a tool for advocacy," he continues, "dollar values can be powerful, particularly when they are weighed against other programs that influence human life and health under limited budgets."

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